


we must not look at goblin men

by Ias



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fae & Fairies, Fae Thranduil, Horror, M/M, Mind Manipulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 07:03:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4555251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ias/pseuds/Ias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His grandmother told him stories of this place: you must walk backwards into the forest if you ever wish to find your way out again. Never stray near the forest’s edge without a piece of cold iron about you. Carry salt, or certain herbs, and never speak your name aloud. The river, with its running water, would protect you. They cannot cross it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we must not look at goblin men

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from Tumblr. I have a fondness for tolkien’s elves mixed with traditional faerie lore, which in itself is pretty spooky. So here’s some creepy fey Thranduil and a very unfortunate Bargeman.

The water rocks his boat, as if hands from beneath the rippling current are tugging it down. The water is dark, unknowable. It isn’t the water that worries him. His eyes turn to the forest, branch and root and shrub spilling over the banks, reaching, always reaching.

Sometimes he passes a gap in the trees, a sliver of darkness among all the green. There’s something about its size and shape, as if, if he were to walk that path, the gap would be the exact size of his body. _I could moor the boat to that tree and clamber up the bank_ , he thinks. _I could slip between those trees and run down the path, run to—_ He isn’t sure where these thoughts come from, or where they lead. He shakes them off, fingers grasping at something beneath the collar of his shirt, and steers far away from the banks when those gaps in the trees appear.

His grandmother told him stories of this place: you must walk backwards into the forest if you ever wish to find your way out again. Never stray near the forest’s edge without a piece of cold iron about you. Carry salt, or certain herbs, and never speak your name aloud. The river, with its running water, would protect you. They cannot cross it.

She was always evasive when Bard would press the issue. _Who are ‘they’, Gran?_ he would tease, only playing at wanting to know.

But she would take his needling seriously, pulling him close by his thin shoulders and staring into his eyes with the look of a hungry hawk. _You best hope you never find out, boy._

Once, when he was older and she was dying, she spoke of such things again. He sat by her beside and soon gave up on trying to speak, only listening to her raving. She spoke of worse things than monsters living under the damp and dark of the leaves, worse than the wide mouths and gleaming eyes. She spoke of others, whose minds turn like the slow march of the seasons, who watch the mortals that play on their borders with cold, mocking eyes. Later, she spoke of nothing at all. Later still, Bard forgets—except for the iron rune on its leather cord around his neck. He knows the forest now, or at least what he can see on the banks. He has finally begun to cultivate the idea that, natural dangers aside, he is safe.

There is a figure waiting at the docks.

At first, Bard mistakes it for the stump of a sun-bleached tree, pale and rigid. But the boat draws closer, and Bard realizes that it’s a person—pale-haired and robed in silver, standing as if its feet do not touch the wood of the dock beneath them. The figure is cold. Proud. Not human. _Not human_. The realization drives a spike of fear into his heart, his grandmother’s warnings rising up like a red tide behind his eyes—and then the figure’s gaze rises to his own. Bard cannot look away, cannot pull back from the numbness that settles into his chest and dulls the fear to nothing more than a memory. It’s as if a door in his mind has been slammed shut, or perhaps thrown open—he’s full of gentle light and softness.

As his boat draws closer, lingering away from shore, something spreads across the creature’s face that could have been a smile, or a carefully studied reenactment of one. There is something so animal in the tilts of its head, like a perplexed dog. For some reason Bard feels the terrifying urge to laugh bubbling up through the quiet haze settling over his mind.

_Come to shore._ He obeys without question, the laughter still singing in his heart. Something plucks at him, struggles against the movement of his hands to nuzzle the boat up to the docks—but he cannot chase the feeling, cannot rationalize a reason why he should fear.

He stands before the creature, stares into the cold blue eyes. Beauty as remote as the stars and as ensnaring as the forest stares back at him. Bard wants to speak, perhaps to ask a question (who am I who are you what have you done to me), but the words slip back down his throat before he can form them on his tongue.

The creature smiles down at him. _Tell me your name._ Its voice—his voice, Bard realizes—is as deep as mountain caverns. He does not hesitate to answer it.

_My name is Bard._ The creature’s smile grows at that, wide and bright and with far more teeth than Bard may have expected. As soon as Bard’s name falls from his lips, any doubts he may have fostered dissolve into blinding light. The creature reaches for him, long fingers unfurling—and then they stop. The smile sours.

_Take it off_. One pale finger juts at the hollow of his throat, and Bard’s hand flies up to the iron medallion around his neck.

For the first time, he hesitates. _My grandmother gave it to me. She said it would keep me safe._

The creature is silent for a long moment. Bard feels a note of warning squirming in his stomach, but it’s not enough to save him. _Follow me,_ the creature says, and the pathway before them (had there ever been a path before? The voice is distant, meaningless) is the exact breadth to accommodate the two of them walking side by side. It’s dark between the trees, but he follows without question.

_Where are we going?_ Bard asks.

_Somewhere beautiful_. Bard believes without question. Yet his head turns back towards the gap of light at his back, the gentle motions of his boat abandoned by the shore.

_How will I get back?_ he asks, and the creature laughs. Bard laughs too, then, though he doesn’t know why. The question doesn’t matter, he realizes. What a funny creature this is. How beautiful the trees, and how foolish of him to have ever been afraid of them. He should have come sooner.

He falls into step behind him, and it is a long time before he realizes there is no path beneath his feet, that the forest at his back is as inscrutable as the trees ahead. There’s no rush of water. Above there is no hint of sky between leaves which rustle without wind. It seems that he has walked into a thicket of night, with the creature at his side the only point of illumination. The light above him seems less wholesome now, less like sunlight rippling on the waves and more like the glow of fungus deep underground. The iron pendant around Bard’s neck seems to grow heavier with every step he takes. When his guide’s eyes slide back over to him again, it pulses with a weight and heat so strong it seems to bore into his chest like a hot coal.

Bard reaches for it with a gasp, and as soon as his hand closes over it the world seems to lurch into sharper focus. He has stopped walking. His guide is watching him with hungry eyes. The weight of the forest piles around him like earth on a grave. The good feelings are evaporating now like dissolving mist, and he knows now what is happening, feels the weight of it even now. He should never have left the boat, should never have spoken his name—but it’s too late now. The creature’s smiles are sharper, his mouth too wide. All around him the forest is as dark as green murky water, but he glows like the lure of a fish, all hollow eyes and jagged teeth. Bard can see what fate awaits him at the end of those pale, too-long fingers, the blood still crusted beneath them.

The metal in Bard’s hands burns. It’s almost too heavy to hold, or perhaps his fingers are growing numb. He can’t feel much of anything, now.

_Please_ , he whispers. _I have children._ They’re the last words he speaks before the iron pendant slips from Bard’s fingers.

_Do not be afraid,_ the voice replies. _We will bring them too._


End file.
